Walking Higher
by soavezefiretto
Summary: So this was what it felt like when someone came back from the dead. JC, some PT, PJ friendship. Please r&r.


Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue.

Summary: Chakotay is missing for a long time, then comes back. Please take a leap of faith, it's not as cheesy as it sounds. J/C, some P/T, P/J friendship. Introducing one friendly no-name Mary Sue.

A/N: I wanted to make this a drabble, really I did. English is not my native language.

I am reading Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep" and listening to Heather Nova's "Walking Higher". Hence the title, that has nothing to do with the story, except that I thought of it while listening to the song, and I couldn't come up with anything better. Also, it's a beautiful song. But no, this is not a songfic.

Feedback: Always. Characters ok? Prose? Mushy-ness/fluff factor? Discuss.

Walking higher

by

soavezefiretto

I.

She had fought hard, of course, like she would have for any of them. Long after everyone else had given up hope, even B'Elanna, she kept looking, sending out endless search parties, spending days on end in the lab, doing fantastically complex calculations over infinitesimal molecule trails.

Then, after two months, she announced they were leaving, and officially declared Commander Chakotay missing in the line of duty. There were tears in her eyes, like there would have been for any of them.

There was a period of mourning. They had lost people before, and it was always hard. But this was Chakotay. Now he was gone, everyone was counting the ways in which their daily lives had been connected to him, and there were so many. You went to see him when you needed to change your shift, when you had trouble with your supervisor, if you wanted to change your service to another section of the ship, or if you'd screwed up, plain and simple. And you knew that when you left his office, you'd feel better. You just knew.

Or he would sit at your table at lunch or just for a cup of coffee, and ask you how you were doing, and you would be so surprised, because you were just ensign XY, you weren't even maquis, and didn't think Commander Chakotay knew you existed on more than the most superficial level. But here it turned out he knew, he knew how much you missed your mother and sister, how you loved a picnic under pine trees, how you'd been feeling miserable about the mean teasing of that crewman you shared a console with but hadn't told anyone because, really, you were a grown woman, how could you still get this upset for being teased?

His eyes were warm and he wasn't condescending, it didn't even occur to you that he could be. For the duration of the conversation you were deeply in love with him, and when he left, with a smile and a wink and a final reminder that you could talk to him anytime, about anything, you believed the world would come to an end and there was nothing else to live for if you couldn't look into those eyes forever.

It passed, of course, and after a while you remembered the actual words he had said, and they were sound, and wise, and gentle. Later, on the bridge, or in engineering, or in sick-bay, you'd see him talking to the captain, and you'd remember and smile to yourself, or maybe at another crewmate, and they'd smile back in the same way. It was just a matter of time, wasn't it?

II.

Tom went through a period of black depression, and B'Elanna had to stand by and watch, helpless, unable to reach out to his grief through her own. Seven didn't say a single word for a whole week (not that it impaired her efficiency in any way, of course), and then spoke very little during the following time, as if she had to re-learn how to communicate at all. Tuvok meditated very intensely for some weeks, and his demeanor became slightly, but noticeably softer. In fact, he was one of the two people who kept the crew together and made it possible for life on Voyager to continue. Now it wasn't rare to see him having lunch with some ensign or crewman, or walk down an aisle with someone and briefly put a hand on his or her shoulder as a gesture of goodbye. This didn't make him any less... Tuvok, but it seemed oddly right.

The other person, of course, was the captain. In spite of Tuvok's recent increased accessibility, most people still liked talking to her much better, and preferred to turn to Tuvok as a second option (although that changed over time, too; there were people who said talking to Tuvok was more relaxing). They were practically queuing up in front of her ready room, and she let them in, and listened to them, day after day. She comforted and reassured and was there in that unique way of hers, offering her presence, her whole being, as a gift, asking for nothing in return.

Although they knew she was grieving (as she would have grieved for any of them), she was also the first one to start laughing openly again. She arranged for a talent night that turned into kind of an homage to Chakotay: Naomi Wildman sang a little song about friendship and trust that had everyone in tears, and then Tom and Harry did a sketch about Chakotay and Q that had everyone rolling on the floor in hysterics. She was the first one to start talking of him without hesitation, as if it was completely normal to talk about Chakotay when he wasn't, in fact, there, and never would be again.

Things went back to normal. Chakotay was missed, but Tom still loved his wife, Harry played the clarinet and lost at pool, the Doctor taught Seven the waltz, the rumba and the cha-cha-cha, and the captain spent time in Maestro Leonardo's atelier, and when she came back to duty, she was alert and relaxed.

III.

One day, Tom ran into her on his way back from the gym. She was just leaning against a bulkhead, which was nothing strange, except that Tom had never seen her do that. Captain Janeway just didn't lean on stuff, not in broad daylight and while there were, well, things to do. As he came closer, he noticed her chest heaving, and he thought she was having a seizure of some kind. His hand flew to his commbadge to notify sickbay, all the while taking three huge steps to her side. That was when he saw the wetness on her cheeks, and his hand dropped to his side like it was filled with lead. She turned her face to him, and what he saw was naked fear, and an anguish so deep that it made him want to cry out, or drop dead on the spot.

His body reacted before his mind did. He picked her up and carried her to her quarters, put her down on the bed, took off her boots and uniform jacket, replicated a cup of herbal tea, then sat by her side and watched her drink it. When she'd finished, she looked at him, and he knew he could leave. Not a single word was spoken.

It never occurred to him how odd it would have been if someone had seen them, Tom Paris, who was married, carrying Captain Janeway in his arms, burying her face against him, and then pressing the entry code to her quarters as she whispered it in his ear. But no one saw them, and he never mentioned it to anyone, not even B'Elanna.

Two weeks later, they were on their way to a shore leave on a beautiful, mostly tropical planet, and the captain mentioned she'd left her suntan lotion in her room. He offered to replicate her some, and she said: "No, but you could be a real sweetheart and get me mine. It's right there on the table, you can't miss it." And when she saw him hesitate, she added, "I haven't changed the code."

That was the closest she ever came to acknowledging that it had happened. That, and the messages she sent to his private account whenever she needed to change her code.

IV.

Seeing him on the screen had been a moment of awe. So this was what it felt like when someone came back from the dead. Silence, first, and then everyone talking at the same time, Chakotay just waiting, patiently. He had been patient for two years, what where a few minutes more? Then the captain's voice, not louder than anyone else's, but sharp as a razor, with a precision to it that cut everything else out.

"Commander, can you give us your exact location?"

He could.

V.

And now he was getting out of the shuttle, walking towards them, with Tom and Harry close behind. How did you greet someone, a friend, who had been a nothing more than a brute workforce, a slave, tortured and humiliated by some unnamed warlord on an unnamed desert planet, for almost two years? No one moved for what seemed like an eternity while Chakotay still continued to walk towards them, and had the cargo bay always been this big?

Then they heard a sound, a kind of strangled wail, or a moaning cough. No human being should ever have to utter a sound like that. At the same time they saw Chakotay break into a run, how could he be running, where did he get the strength, there was barely any flesh on his bones! But he ran, a curious expression of concentration on his face, and reached the captain before she hit the floor. Instead, both of them kind of slid down together, first to their knees, then further down, until they came to rest on the sides of their thighs, as if they had been taking a walk on a spring day in a park and had decided that this was the just the spot to relax with a couple of sodas and a pack of cards.

She was resting her whole body against his, she was limp, as obviously all her energy was going into the wild sobs that were racking her. When they talked about it afterwards, all the crewmembers present agreed that never had they heard or seen anyone cry like that. It was beyond despair, beyond pain, beyond madness even. And how incongruous it was, somehow, that it should be him who was holding her, him, whose hair was falling out in tufts, whose cheeks were hollow and eyes yellowed and bloodshot, whose hands were shaking just moments before.

But not when he touched her, not when he ran one hand over her hair and steadied her with the other. His voice was exactly as they remembered it too, as he murmured something unintelligible into her ear, over and over again. They stayed like that for a long time, or maybe it was just a minute or two. Then he got up off the floor, lifted her into his arms, as if he'd never done anything else and hadn't lost thirty pounds, and walked towards the exit. On his way, he stopped to kiss B'Elanna on the cheek, and as she looked back at Tom, she could feel the same wailing the captain was still screaming into Chakotay's shirt well up inside her own belly.


End file.
